Plan To Eat is The Best Meal Planning App We’ve Tried! Here’s Why

plan to eat logo surrounded by veggies

Plan to Eat is definitely our favorite meal-planning app by far.

In this review, we’ll explain some of the great features that have kept us loyal Plan to Eat customers for years.

You can listen to us discuss the app below or continue reading on for a quick summary.

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About Plan to Eat (PTE)

Before we discuss our review of Plan to Eat, I want to take a moment to talk about the company itself.

As a conscious consumer, I like to learn about the companies I purchase from to ensure that I support their values and overall vibe.

On their About page, PTE makes a point to say that their app isn’t just about cooking; it’s about connection. They say,

“By providing tools that streamline the meal planning process, we equip households to eat better food, eat together, save money at the grocery store, and have a less stressful cooking experience in the kitchen.”

Here are a few ways they walk their talk.

 

No Ads or Pop-Ups

One of the first things you’ll notice when you’re in the app is that you’re not bombarded with pop-ups and ads. The site is designed to give its customers a clean stress-free user experience without a lot of distractions.

plan to eat main screen

 

Risk-Free 30-Day Free Trial

Another pleasant surprise you’ll find is a 30-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card to get started. I do a lot of free trials for different things and the vast majority require a credit card, which can be stressful in itself just to keep up with. How many times have you been charged for something you ended up not wanting because you forgot to cancel your trial? So frustrating!

You won’t find any hidden costs in this app or any means of trying to trick you into subscribing. As a matter of fact, if you do subscribe and decide you don’t want to keep it, they also offer a 60-day hassle-free refund policy.

 

No Investors

Plan to Eat also prides itself on not taking money from investors, a practice that benefits its customers in a couple of ways.

First, there isn’t that “startup mentality” of acquiring as many customers as possible just so that they can sell the company to a bigger conglomerate and move on.

Second, investors often have their own agendas, which lead them to try to influence companies to improve their bottom line by any means possible. While this isn’t 100% always a bad thing, it can sometimes result in the customer not being the number one priority.

Now that we’ve told you about why we like the company itself, let’s talk about why we LOVE the app!

 

Key Features of The Plan to Eat App

 

Collecting Recipes

Recipe Clipper

The recipe clipper on Plan to Eat allows you to add recipes from almost any website. This is a great feature and works well with most websites on both desktop and mobile.

We’ve discussed in the past that Larissa and I have very different tastes when it comes to food, so the fact that we can each save our own favorites from just about anywhere is a great way to create a customized meal plan that we’ll both enjoy.

I also love to save recipes non-vegetarian recipes and switch out or delete ingredients to make them veg-friendly.

 

Sharing Recipes and Plans

Another nice feature is that you can share recipes and meal plans with friends. You can choose to make certain recipes public or keep them private.

 

Organizing Your Recipes

Plan to Eat allows you to organize your recipes in many different ways, making it very easy to find what you’re looking for.

You can organize your recipes by:

  • Course/ Cuisine/ Main Ingredient
  • Fully customizable tags (ex. allergen-free, dairy-free, crockpot, etc.)
  • Your own personal star rating

 

The Cooking View

If you’ve ever used your phone, laptop, or tablet to cook from, you know that it can be frustrating to have to keep tapping the screen to keep it awake. When you’re in PTE’s cooking view, you don’t need to worry about that because your screen will stay awake.

plan to eat cooking view

 

Meal Planner

Meal planning has been a topic we’ve discussed several times on the podcast because it’s key to helping you stick to your health goals.

When Larissa and I fail to plan, we find that we’re much more tempted to order takeout or eat junk food. This can sometimes lead to a downward spiral into poor eating habits.

Plan to Eat has an amazing planner that makes the meal planning process easy by giving you the ability to customize a meal plan that fits your family and dietary preferences.

plan to eat planning mode

As you plan, it adds ingredients to your shopping list, so no more forgetting a key ingredient.

The menus and calendar planning options let you plan out your meals for future weeks and months, too. Easily reschedule meals by duplicating, dragging, and dropping them on your calendar.

 

Meal Prep

Another topic we’ve covered on the podcast is meal prep and batch cooking. Confession time — I had no idea that this app had a feature that could help me track meals I’ve prepared ahead of time and stored in my freezer!

Simply click a recipe on your planner and select “add to freezer.” You can include the date your meal was frozen, the number of meals, and the number of servings to help you track what you have saved. This can help reduce food waste. No more finding something that was frozen 2 years ago stuffed in the back of your freezer.

 

Shopping List

This feature lets Larissa and me shop like a boss! With Plan To Eat‘s shopping list, not only is our list created as we plan your meals, but once we get to the store, we split up and both shop from the app. The app updates continuously, meaning each of us can see what items the other is crossing off. When we start on opposite ends of the store and work the list together, we can knock it out really fast.

Another great feature is that you can create separate grocery lists for different stores. For example, we have a list for our neighborhood grocery store but we also have separate lists for Trader Joe’s, Costco, and Whole Foods.

 

Is Plan To Eat Worth It?

If you haven’t guessed our answer to this question yet, it’s YES — we think the app is totally worth the $39 a year (price at the time of this review).

The one drawback I can point out (if I’m being super picky) is that it does have a little bit of a learning curve. It’s not super hard to learn but you’d be doing yourself a favor by taking some time to watch their tutorials.

Over the years they’ve added more videos to help you get the most out of the app. Recently (in 2022) they created a Learning Series to help you get started.

Don’t forget, you can take it for a free 30-day test drive!

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